Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb Tart

For a long time now, I have been hear­ing amaz­ing things about the rhubarb tart by French pas­try chef Philippe Con­tici­ni. This tart is sup­posed to be THE tart that will make you love rhubarb. It is filled with sweet­ly stewed rhubarb that sits atop a thin lay­er of almond paste, and is cov­ered with caramelized rhubarb stripes. I love how visu­al­ly appeal­ing this rhubarb tart looks! Conticini’s recipe is quite com­pli­cat­ed, so I have worked to sim­pli­fy it while keep­ing the fla­vors and visu­al appeal. The result is a pret­ty deli­cious tart!

A note about rhubarb

Rhubarb is good for you! It is packed with dietary fiber, pro­tein, vit­a­min C, vit­a­min K, B com­plex vit­a­mins, cal­ci­um, potas­si­um, man­ganese and mag­ne­sium. How­ev­er, it is impor­tant to note that only the red stalks are eat­able. The green leaves are not eat­able, in fact they are actu­al­ly poi­so­nous. Usu­al­ly leaves are already removed from the stalks you buy at the gro­cery store. How­ev­er, if you buy stalks that still have their green leaves, it is very impor­tant you remove those leaves and toss them in the garbage.

For the stewed rhubarb, you can either use fresh rhubarb that you peel and slice your­self, or you can buy frozen rhubarb already peeled and sliced. How­ev­er, for the top­ping of rhubarb stripes, you will need stalks of fresh rhubarb.

A few notes about the recipe

As men­tioned before, I have sim­pli­fied Conticini’s recipe. Con­tici­ni uses a spe­cial crust espe­cial­ly for this tart. How­ev­er, his crust, though deli­cious, is very dif­fi­cult to work with, so I decid­ed to just use a stan­dard sweet tart crust (the French “pate brisée”). You can view my recipe here. Alter­na­tive­ly, you could use a store-bought sweet pie crust.

Conticini’s rhubarb tart is filled with a lay­er of almond paste and a lay­er of sweet­ly stewed rhubarb. For the almond paste, I used a sim­pli­fied ver­sion, as rec­om­mend­ed in well-known French blog “C’est ma Fournée!”. For the stewed rhubarb, I used the orig­i­nal recipe, but with US gelatin pow­der and a lit­tle less sug­ar.

If you are not using a store-bought pie crust, pre­pare the tart crust and set aside.

Start with the stewed rhubarb (you can even pre­pare it the day before). If using fresh rhubarb, peel the rhubarb using a veg­etable peel­er, and slice it. Place the rhubarb slices in a pot with the sug­ar and water, heat on low heat, stir­ring from time to time, for about 50 min­utes. Note: if using frozen rhubarb, you will need to use a lit­tle bit more water (see ingre­di­ents list).

In the mean­time, pour 1 oz. cold water in a small bowl. Add 1 enveloppe gelatin pow­der. Mix and set aside.

Once the stewed rhubarb is done (see pic­ture), take it off the stove, add the gelatin and mix. Set it aside. If doing it the day before, place it in a cov­ered con­tain­er in the fridge.

Next, pre­pare the almond paste. In a mix­ing bowl, mix 1 oz. soft­ened but­ter with 1 oz. pow­dered sug­ar. Add 1 oz. egg (this is about 1/2 of a large egg- note: we need both egg white + yolk) and 1 oz. almond flour. You can add 1 tea­spoon of imi­ta­tion rum extract if you wish. Mix with a wood­en spoon.

Spread the almond paste on the crust, and bake for 15 min­utes at 350 degrees Fahren­heit (oven already pre­heat­ed). (pic­ture is of baked almond paste).

Take your tart with almond paste out of the oven. Pour the stewed rhubarb over the almond paste. Use a spat­u­la to even up the fill­ing. Set aside.

With a knife, cut 4 rhubarb stalks in mul­ti­ple hor­i­zon­tal stripes. Do not make the stripes too thin as they will get thin­ner when you bake them. See pic­ture.

Place the rhubarb stripes on a bak­ing pan cov­ered with parch­ment paper. Sprin­kle gen­er­ous­ly with lots of gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar. See pic­ture. Bake in oven for 20 min­utes at 370 degrees Fahren­heit. The stripes should become translu­cent.

Place the stripes over the tart’s fill­ing (see pic­ture).

With scis­sors, trim the edges (cut any excess rhubarb).
Enjoy the tart cold.